1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a control system, a set of circuits and methods used to control fluorescent lamps used to provide backlight in Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD). The control of the lamps is carried out with a micro controller unit (MCU), which allows the implementation of a digital control system. The digital control system allows multiple lamps to be driven out of the same inverter circuit while preserving the independent light intensity and dimming for each lamp. The digital control system is adaptive and compensates for effects such as aging, operating temperature and lamp variations. The result is equalized lamp brightness for LCD displays. The improved performance is beneficial for displays that require multiple lamps and where all lamps must produce even intensity such as in Television application or high-resolution computer displays.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical inverter and lamp circuit (100) is shown in FIG. 1. Then inverter is contained in a Printed Circuit Assembly (PCA). The PCA contains analog circuits consisting of a Mosfet switch (101), a coil (102), a push-pull driver circuit (103), a tuning capacitor (104), a transformer (105) and a ballast capacitor (106). The function of the analog circuits in the inverter is to convert a DC voltage input (114) into an AC voltage (115) at the output. The inverter is connected to a lamp circuit consisting of a fluorescent lamp (109), a potentiometer (110) a resistor (111) and a rectifier diode (112). The lamp (109) can be a Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL). A terminal of the potentiometer (110) is connected to a feedback circuit (108). This circuit senses a half wave rectified voltage generated across the potentiometer (110) and the resistor (111) and sends the voltage to an inverter controller (107). The controller (107) internally contains an analog circuit, which compares the sensed signal from the feedback circuit (108) to an internal reference and as a result generates a pulse width modulated signal (PWM) which then switches the Mosfet (101) on and off in the appropriate manner in order to produce the required AC (115) needed to drive the lamp (109). The controller also has another analog circuit, which allows for the PWM to build a relatively large AC voltage (115) when you first power up the system. The large voltage produced upon power up is needed to produce the initial voltage (Strike Voltage) required to ionize the gas in the lamp as required to initiate fluorescence. Once the lamp turns on, the voltage applied to the lamp can be reduced. The potentiometer (110) is used to adjust the brightness of the lamp in order to account for component variations in manufacturing. A separate dimming voltage (113) is connected to the internal comparator in the inverter controller (107). The dimming voltage 113 is added to the signal from the lamp current feedback circuit (108), which results in a change of the PWM and a change in the lamp (107) brightness.
The use of the inverter controller (107) results in analog control of the inverter and lamp circuits. Some disadvantages of the analog control include:                1. Requires manual adjustment of potentiometer (110) to compensate for component variations        2. Does not compensate for aging of the lamp (109) since an aging lamp will produce less light intensity for the same amount of current        3. The control system is not adaptable to changes in temperature        
As an example of the limitations in current systems consider the backlight assembly in FIG. 2. The drawing represents a backlighting assembly for a large LCD screen system (200). The large screen may be LCD technology. Large screens require numerous CCFLs. Current approaches to the lighting assembly basically multiply the entire assembly in FIG. 1 (100). As can be appreciated form the large screen system (200), each inverter and lamp circuit requires individual manual adjustments and multiple inverter circuits. The multiple inverters are needed in order to allow individual adjustment for the current in each lamp. Adjusting the current in a lamp changes the amount of light intensity. In many applications uniformity of light across the display panel is required to obtain high picture quality. This implementation adds weight especially because the numerous transformers used. The large screen system (200) does not have a way to equalize the light from the lamps since each inverter is independent from each other. The entire solution is costly, heavy, requires large amounts of manual labor and lamp light intensity is uneven. Also, as the lamps age, there is no way to compensate for the decrease in light intensity.